Page 41 of The World Undone

The reverent sound of my name in her voice rattled through my head, competing with the terrified screams that usually took up that space.

Atlas, look at me.

My eyes widened when I realized what she was doing. I pushed back further in the bed, trying like hell to think of anything else—anything but those visions, anything but that relentless ache of grief. I didn’t want her to see that, to feel that. She carried enough pain on her own. She didn’t need to be burdened with mine.

“No,” I said, teeth clenched as I curled in on my side, trying like hell to close my mind off. For a blissful hour tonight, fear and pain had been replaced by an intoxicating desire that I had no more control over than I did the darkness. I’d come twice, my body on fire with a pleasure that felt like a sin. Feeling Max’s joy, her body alive and electric like that was a drug I’d never grow immune to—but I didn’t want it if that connection came at the cost of my suffering filtering into her, of it becoming hers.

Atlas, she said again, the word like a prayer as her lips pressed gently against mine. I was too weak to resist the taste of her, minty from her toothpaste, but also uniquely her. I’m not afraid of your darkness. Please don’t shut me out. Not again, not anymore. I only want to see you—and for you to see me too. Please. You’re not there anymore, and I’m here. We’re here. We’re both terrible at getting out of our heads, at staying out of these thought loops. But Dec was right. We can help each other—together.

Her words were rushed, panicked, as they snaked beneath and then through my thoughts, replacing their clutch with hers.

So fight.

I know it’s selfish to ask this of you, believe me, I know it. This isn’t toxic positivity talking right now. The world is literally crumbling down around us, and I can’t lose you again—not to fear and pain that’s been wrung from you by people who couldn’t see you, colonizing your every thought. They don’t get to win.

You have to fight because we—I—I need you. So fight, Atlas. Please.

The plea filtered through my head, cracking and reverberating again and again, growing louder and louder until the memories of my nightmares seemed pale in comparison, effervescent—like fire turned to smoke, until it was nothing more than air.

Her own fear mingled with mine, taking shape until I could see the root of it.

The others the drude fed on weren’t getting better. They were dying.

Max had been wringing herself out trying to help Sarah, but she couldn’t.

She could only help me—but I had to meet her half way.

“Please,” she said again, her voice whisper-soft with a tremble, “and not just for me—fight because you want that too—to find your way back to yourself.”

“I don’t know how,” I said, hating the soft tremble in my voice, the hollowness of it. “I don’t know how to exist like this.”

She pulled back a few inches, her face still close to mine, but I found myself already missing the feel of her mouth against mine. “By letting me carry some of it.”

“I don’t?—”

Her finger pressed against my lips, and even in the darkness, I could see the hardness lining her eyes. “Seeing you like this, holding it all on your own—” she shook her head, dropped her fingers back down to the mattress between us, “that hurts more than these visions ever could. They aren’t real to me in the way that they are to you. They’re yours, not mine. I just want you to talk to me, please. I think—” She blinked. The waterline of her eyes was damp with unshed tears, as her chin dimpled. “I think I’m losing Sarah. I can’t bring her back because I don’t have a connection with her. But I brought you back, because we are built to support each other, to carry each other. I can’t lose you—not again.”

Her sadness, her fear struck deep into my chest. There was no hiding from it, not when the bond was flaring between us, not when she was this close to me.

For a moment, her eyes held mine, encouraging me to dig through, to feel the depth of her truth. She meant what she said.

“I don’t know how to fix this,” I whispered, afraid putting too much voice to the words would reveal the truth—that I couldn’t. That I didn’t deserve to be fixed. “I don’t know how to fix me.”

“You don’t need to be fixed, Atlas. You just need to be. Talk to me. We haven’t spoken about that night—about what happened, what you went through—none of it.” The pain in her voice pulled at me like a bony claw. It only took me a moment to realize that it was pain she was feeling on my behalf.

She wasn’t angry with me, not anymore—even after everything I’d put her through, put them all through, she’d forgiven me.

You are the only one still trying to earn your forgiveness, Atlas.

The words echoed in my skull, peeling back a thin but not unnoticeable layer of the gruesome reality competing with this one.

“I don’t know where to start,” I said, my voice unrecognizable to me. There was pain there, a deep sadness that I couldn’t linger in or dissect for too long.

“What the drude put you through was horrendous.” Her hand closed over mine, twining our fingers together, lending me her strength. “And your father?—”

“Deserved to die,” I finished for her.

I held no sadness for his death. There was no regret buried in my bones for handing her the heart of the man who’d broken hers.

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